


it’s choking me up (this feeling inside)

by unchartedandunknown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, this is...Corny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchartedandunknown/pseuds/unchartedandunknown
Summary: Two people try and cope with what they think are their supposedly unrequited feelings.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 115





	it’s choking me up (this feeling inside)

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing an hp au for this ship but decided to take a break!...with angst, which I don’t normally write so who knows how this’ll go? We practicing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It comes at the worst possible time for Linhardt, because it happens in the middle of dinnertime.

Caspar’s swinging an arm around his shoulders, and Linhardt pauses mid-bite to crane his neck to see the professor laugh at something Leonie says. It’s easier to make him laugh now, but it’s rare enough for Linhardt to remember when he first arrived at the monastery, how cold and standoffish he had seemed to the students until a few months later when Claude said something and the professor had smiled, small and slight but precious and capturing everyone’s attention immediately.

There’s a burning in his throat. It’s been there for a while now, for the months since returning to the monastery after five years. Linhardt always busied himself with other things, fooled himself into thinking maybe he had developed some kind of allergy with a plant that only grew within the monastery.

How wrong he was.

It always comes back with a vengeance, an unwanted thing that won’t leave, an extra shadow, another burden.

The pain is unbearable now. It feels like thorns digging into his lungs, threatening to tear through, and he stands up noisily, clawing at his throat. He stumbles off, the questioning shouts of the others a distant thing as he lurches outside, clutching the wall.

He bends down - the burning in his throat and lungs boil over like bubbling lava - and opens his mouth to retch something that doesn’t feel like puke, no, puke doesn’t tickle the inside of his throat or taste like pollen and iron on his tongue.

He blinks, vision clearing as he can finally breathe easy. Straightens at the sight before him.

Purple petals rain the ground, peppered in red. Linhardt picks up the flower, sticky with his blood. Twirls it in his trembling hand. It seems to stare back at him mockingly.

“Linhardt?” He doesn’t need to look up to know that it’s Caspar approaching, Caspar putting a warm hand on his shoulder, who inhales in shock at the flower in his hand. “Who...who is it?”

Linhardt smiles back at him, worn around the edges and frayed at the ends. He’s just unknowingly setup his own execution in the worst way possible. “Who else can it be?”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“This hasn’t happened before?” Manuela paces the floor, heels clicking on creaking wood.

The flower sits between them innocently. He cleaned it of blood before he came to her, revealing a healthy green stem and vibrant pink petals.

( _Amaryllis_ , he read, long ago in a book given to him by the keeper of the greenhouse. _Symbolizes pride, determination, and radiant beauty._ )

Byleth shakes his head. “I just...woke up.” His voice is a wispy shadow of itself.

“So you were dreaming of someone. Do you remember who?”

He almost wants to laugh at the question.

_ーhair flowing in the wing, laughter that rang soft in his ears, a sweet smile directed at himー_

“No,” he lies.

Manuela doesn’t look like she believes him, but isn’t about to press for answers. “Do you know what the Hanahaki disease is?” He shakes his head. “When you love someone, flowers begin to grow inside you. It’s an illness that can’t be cured. I suppose it’s a good thing, then, that every man I’ve met has never contracted this disease.” She falls silent.

“It can’t be cured?” Byleth prompts. On a normal day, he would let her complain about her problems with romance and dating, but today is atypical, and he wants answers.

“Not with any normal medicine or magic. The Hanahaki disease forms in the person when they think their love is unrequited. A way to cure it would be to get the person who’s captured their affections to fall in love with them in turn.”

“What if the feelings remain unrequited?”

“Then the person with the disease will die.”

Byleth’s breath rattles in his lungs, stirring the flowers growing inside as he lets the statement sit between them.

It’s almost silly that this is how he’s gonna go out. His students thought he was dead for five years, and in a way he was.

But this is different. This death would be permanent, in a six-feet-deep-grave kind of way.

It’s funny how quickly Byleth accepts that his feelings will remain unrequited and unknown. In less than five minutes since he’s been in Manuela’s office, he’s been told that the flowers growing in his body will kill him. In less than five minutes, he’s had to rearrange his future to accommodate for the fact thatーwell, he won’t be there for it.

Death has always been just around the corner for him, in a different way than it has for others. He was trained to kill, has grown used to seeing empty eyes and too-still bodies lying in blood or torn like a worn doll. And after there was Sothis and her Divine Pulse: if someone dies, or if he were about to die, he could simply use the Divine Pulse and save them if needed.

(Turning back time, though, is not a be-all, end-all: his father is proof of that.)

But this isn’t something he can turn back time to avoid. He can’t avoid feelings.

“How long do I have?”

Manuela purses her lips, conflicted. “It can be hard to tell with Hanahaki. Anything from three weeks to six months. Exposure to the other person shortens the time you have left.

Byleth nods, already forming a plan in his mind. “Thank you.”

Manuela stops him before he leaves, voice insistent, similar to how her voice turns commanding when it’s needed on the battlefield: “You should tell them.”

They are at war. No one has time for whatever Byleth’s dealing with. His former students need him to lead the way, to guide them as best as he can to the end. To rest, to peace, to prosperity for Fódlan.

He does not think about how that future will look without him.

(After all, he wasn’t meant to survive that fall. Maybe this is just his comeuppance.

He was always living on borrowed time.)

“I will think about it,” he says, closing the door behind him with an air of finality.

They both know it’s a lie.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


There’s not enough time.

Linhardt still has so many questions about Crests - research to do, theories to write and confirm - and he’s never going to have time to do it.

And in the dead of night, as he slogs through a book in the library alone, he thinks about how time, that has always felt limited in the midst of war, feels considerably shorter for him than it does for others. He catches himself thinking about how this could be his last time drinking angelica tea, the last time he’ll have a meal surrounded by friends in the dining hall, the last time he’ll snort over something stupid Caspar says.

_ーthe last, the last, the lastー_

A tear splashes onto the page.

Linhardt blinks, barely believing the blurry sight himself until he feels tears run scalding down his face, the familiar shudder that runs through his body.

He wants to tell himself to pull himself together, that he might not even have time for a good crying session now, but he’s more relieved that the tears haven’t turned red. It means the disease hasn’t spread so far (yet).

So for just a short, inconsequential moment in his short, inconsequential life, in the light of a sputtering candle, he allows himself to sob into his hands, feels his heart break over and over and _over_ as he thinks about what he could’ve had, could’ve been.

(And if he allows himself, he’ll think about how he’ll never be able to see _his_ soft almost-smile again, to ever feel his hand in his, to fall asleep curled up in _his_ arms because there’s no way he feels the same.)

His throat burns, an itch that’s becoming uncomfortably familiar.

He pushes down his racing thoughts and feelings, blinks and wipes away his tears even if it turns the skin around his eyes raw, and downs the rest of his tea to soothe it, as temporary as it may be.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Is that all, professor?” Ashe puts the last crate on the ground, his smile eager.

“That’ll be all. Thank you.”

“Aw, professor!” Hilda coos. “You know we do as much as we can to help around here!” Bold words, coming from the girl who did nothing. But Byleth’s lips twitch fondly nonetheless as the two talk.

He’s going to missーthis. All of it.

In the distance, he sees _him_ walk past with Caspar, and he reminds himself to breathe past the green in his lungs.

The only one at fault here is him.

Him and his stupid, stupid feelings.

“Professor.” Byleth turns to see Mercedes beckoning to him. “Would you like to have tea together?”

Usually he’s the one that does the asking. The fact that it’s the other way around for once flatters him, though he worries that she’s in need of advice as she leads the way to seat him at a circular table in the courtyard.

It’s a beautiful day. A waste to spend it in a strategy room, but that is where Claude will undoubtedly be, and where Byleth will find himself later, when Claude needs someone to bounce ideas off of for their next move.

Mercedes is quiet in a peaceful way, less unsettling, perhaps, than Felix’s silence in brief moments, or Hubert’s unwavering gaze like a snake tracking its prey.

(Byleth could’ve saved them all. He knows he could have.

But he failed, and that is what hurts most, the knife that twists deeper, burying itself to the hilt when he thinks he has already felt enough pain, had enough regrets: his own incompetence.)

“Honey with water helps soothe the pain.” Mercedes’s gentle voice returns Byleth to the present, where light shines softly as she taps her spoon against her cup, ringing in the silence. “Though, you already take your tea with honey, so I suppose that doesn’t matter much to you.”

At first, he thinks she’s talking about the metaphorical knife in his side. But Mercedes looks up at him knowingly, and he has to glance around to make sure there’s no one else around.

“How long have you known?”

“Didn’t I tell you I’ve always been sensitive to the pain in others?” Mercedes gives him his tea - chamomile with honey, still warm and steaming. “If I had to guess, I’d say about three weeks?”

Three weeks. Mercedes is truly perceptive. Byleth has always known that, but it’s a nice reminder, though it scares him at the same time - if Mercedes has known, how many others can see through his glass exterior?

Mercedes cups the hand not wrapped around his cup in her own. Her hands are smooth, scarless; the hands of a healer.

Only, Byleth wishes it was the hands of a different healer holding his own right now.

“If it is who I think it is, professor,” Manuela says, and Byleth breathes in sharply, “then I think you’ll find that your feelings aren’t as unrequited as you thought.”

And, _oh,_ that’s so like Mercedes, to seek to comfort someone when they need it. To reassure them with her words, encourage them with a smile.

Even if they are lies. Sweet, honeyed lies that Byleth would love to believe is true.

“Thank you for the advice,” he finds himself saying, automatic, even though it was not advice at all, not to him. Just an attempt at reassurance, empty promises. It’s not her fault; Byleth will never blame Mercedes. In her position, this is all she can do for him.

Mercedes sighs as he leaves, and Byleth refuses to think for a second that maybe, just maybe, she thought she was telling the truth.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“I think the professor’s been avoiding you.” Caspar runs a hand through Linhardt’s hair. He can be gentle when he wants to be, and he is now, brushing Linhardt’s hair.

They never talk about it directly. Caspar’s tactless and straightforward, but when it came to this he hasn’t said much about it. Linhardt appreciates it, appreciates him.

“Do you think he noticed?” This is the closest they’ve come so far of talking about what’s happening to Linhardt.

“Nah, I don’t think that’s it.” Caspar has that tone of voice, the one he uses when he’s pondering.

“Careful not to break that brain of yours,” Linhardt says. “I can hear you thinking from here.”

“Shut up,” Caspar replies, half-hearted, because this is a pattern of conversation they’ve long been used to and fall into as easily as Linhardt falls asleep, and he’s still stuck in his own head. “This is gonna sound strange coming from me, but I think the professor’s too dense to notice you, so he’s gotta be avoiding you for something else.”

He’s right, it does sound strange to hear that from him. Especially considering it took Caspar several weeks and repeated prodding questions from Linhardt for him to realize Ashe had fallen in love with him and was suffering from the Hanahaki disease. Which disappeared soon after Caspar realized his own feelings and told Ashe. A happy ending for them.

“Maybe he already knows, and is trying to avoid me to spare me the suffering of getting rejected,” Linhardt says. It sounds like something Byleth would do - he really is too kind for his own good. “Plus, we need as many healers as we can get with the war and all. Wouldn’t do to have me dead.”

Caspar works to untangle an unruly snarl of hair, tugging softly. “I just said he’s dense, didn’t I? He didn’t even know Hilda and Marianne were dating until he saw them smooch.”

“To give him some credit, though, he _was_ presumed dead for five years, and falling off a cliff _does_ tend to have you missing out on your social life if you’re not dead.”

“That still doesn’t change the fact that our professor’s absolutely clueless when it comes to romance,” Caspar argues. “Have you ever seen him with anyone, ever?”

Now that he thinks about it, “He always did spend all his time helping the students, didn’t he?” A mess of a teacher at first, according to Claude, but he got his act together quickly. As expected of the son of Captain Jeralt, as Leonie would say.

“He went outside of the monastery about as many times Bernadetta leaves her room, and if he did go out it was to the market to buy supplies for us.”

Linhardt rolls his eyes, balling up the pillow under his chin. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m saying,” Caspar ties Linhardt’s hair back with his regular ribbon, “that maybe there’s another reason he’s avoiding you that’s the same reason you’re avoiding him.”

Linhardt draws away, stinging. “Hoping doesn’t benefit anyone in this situation, Caspar.” Besides that, there’s no sign of the professor being sick at all. He thinks.

He can’t remember the last time he really looked at him.

“I’m not telling you to hope.” Caspar’s hand is soft on his, despite the callouses and roughness of his skin. “I’m telling you to use that brain of yours for once to think of something not relating to your Crest research.”

“Justーleave me alone,” he sighs. “I need toー...nap.”

Caspar leaves, uncharacteristically silent and reluctant. When Linhardt draws his hands to his face he finds them shaking.

His whole room smells iris, has smelled of the cursed flower for the past month now. The scent chases him in his dreams, lingers on his clothes no matter how hard he washes his clothes or tries to erase everything with the smell of angelica.

What Caspar said gives him pause. Because it’s true, Byleth has been spending less time around him. He remembers when being around him was often an everyday thing, but now he rarely catches the professor out of class, on the pier or having tea or anywhere else he frequents. It’s unsettling, because that means there’s something bothering Byleth enough for Caspar to notice. And if Caspar noticed, then it’s likely everyone else has noticed, too, but for some reason Linhardt doesn’t know _why_ Byleth is acting this way.

He used to spend everyday with Byleth, if he thinks about it - whether it was fishing in the pier, working in the library, napping under the trees, the two would inevitably run into each other. They were like the moon and the sun chasing each in the skies, a constant cycle.

But the cycle’s gone haywire, and all Linhardt can wonder is if this was his fault. If he did something without noticing himself, and now Byleth is distancing himself because of it.

The distance helps in the worst way possible. Linhardt doesn’t cough up as many flowers as he thinks he should be; the rate is slower.

But it doesn’t help the pain and longing to confront Byleth and ask what’s wrong.

Linhardt wishes he could sleep off his emotions and wake to find them as washed out puddles on the floor. He'd be a new person without them.

But the world isn’t convenient this way, and he falls into a disturbed sleep with the scent of iris and a burning in his lungs like an eternal fire.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s getting worse. Byleth doesn’t want to admit it to himself, but he can’t run from his problems forever, especially when his problems come from within his body and are screaming to be let out.

It feels like there’s water slowly filling up his lungs, except it’s not water. There’s flowers growing inside of him, and it’s terrifying. He’s scared something will happen at a crucial moment and he’ll cost their side the war.

But after he expels the amaryllises from his body (is it just him, or is there more blood accompanying it?) he gets back up. Waits for his vision to clear.

Carries on like normal.

Except it’s not, and Byleth doesn’t know how much time he has left, how long he can keep this secret (poorly, if Mercedes talking to him proved anything, if Marianne’s glances and Manuela’s stares that were, for once, not flirty or humourous but worry-filled) until it eats him alive.

To Byleth, he’s already dug his own grave and lain in it. This is just the earth’s way of retaking his body, stripping him of skin and bones and everything that makes him until all that is left is dust and bones in a coffin, and even that will decompose with time.

He just wishes it didn’t have to be so soon.

But it’s best for everyone involved, he thinks, as he staggers away to his room, alone, leaving a pile of bloody flowers on the floor.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Five months is a long time. _It’s about time,_ Linhardt thinks grimly, when he finally runs into the professor again.

They don’t talk much anymore. Other than on the battlefield or in the strategy room, where Byleth gives coughs discreetly and gives clipped orders - straightforward as always - and avoids Linhardt’s eyes.

And maybe he _does_ know, because he makes it so easy for Linhardt to avoid him that he doesn’t even have to try that hard.

Byleth’s never in his usual places anymore. He doesn’t look for Linhardt in his napping spots when he doesn’t come to class, he doesn’t invite him to tea, and he doesn’t find Linhardt in the library where he surely is every night, flipping through every book with a feverish, concentrated energy that puts Felix’s sword training to shame.

It’s the most effort he’s put into anything in years. He feels miserable for all the wrong reasons. Not even the information he finds on Crests motivates him as much as it should.

But he does meet Byleth one night, as he stumbles out of the library and reminds himself to breathe, leaving a mess of irises and blood to clean later.

(At least the only blood on his hands is his own this time, though it doesn’t stop the trembling.)

It scares him, almost, the figure in the distance. Linhardt recognizes him, but he thinks that maybe it’s just another dream or a hallucination, anything other than what he sees.

But Byleth stands upright in the moonlight, straight and taut as a bowstring, looking up at the moon like it’s the only thing keeping him together.

And if it were any other time, maybe Linhardt would be glad to see him, would think maybe Byleth looks like a figure cast into marble. Instead, he thinks Byleth looks exhausted.

There’s nothing wrong at a glance, but Linhardt has always looked harder, tried to see through him in a way. And Byleth has purple-deep bruises under his eyes that can’t be mended by any healing magic, and the downward slope of his shoulders spells defeat.

Linhardt tries to remember when Byleth started looking like this. He likes to think he knows the professor at least a little better than most, but these past few months, Linhardt has...shut himself away. Meanwhile, Byleth looks like he’s been in mourning while Linhardt was gone.

(He wonders, distantly, if he looks the same as Byleth, a husk of himself.)

“What’s on your mind?” He doesn’t mean to speak; his voice echoes, and Byleth grabs the sword at his waist, automatic as he turns. But he stills at the sight of Linhardt.

That’s the odd thing, you would think he would be relaxed by the sight of a former student. But his jaw tightens with tension and his hand twitches once for his sword again.

“Professor,” he says softly, stepping into the light, because maybe Byleth can’t see him clearlyーis his vision bad? He didn’t think it was.

Byleth sighs, long and weary. His hands drop to his sides, empty, but he looks like a mouse cornered by a cat that’s finally tired of playing with its meal. Then Byleth looks down, and his eyes don’t widen, but it’s a near thing. “Why do you have blood on your hands?”

“Iーoh.” He didn’t think he was going to run into anyone tonight. He would hide his hands, but he’s already seen. Linhardt tries to ignore the stickiness of the blood drying, and if he avoids looking down he’s mostly successful in convincing himself that it’s not blood on his hands but maybe sap, or honey, even if he knows those don’t feel the same as blood, doesn’t have the same lukewarmth that blood hasー

“Come here.” Byleth’s tone leaves no room for disobeying, and Linhardt steps forward hesitantly.

“It was just an accident with a spell I was experimenting with,” Linhardt says. Who is he trying to convince at this point, himself or Byleth?

Byleth takes his hands in his. Even through the gloves, Byleth’s hands are pleasantly warm, a different kind from the blood. He turns over Linhardt’s hands, inspecting for wounds, only to find none.

Byleth walks him along to the pier. Linhardt would protest, but he’s scared that if he speaks the only thing that’ll come out are flowers. So he holds his heart close and tries to still his hands and looks instead at Byleth’s back as he leads the way.

The water from the lake is ice cold and is about as comforting as the thought that very soon, Linhardt won’t be alive to fish from this lake again. He washes the blood off, the crimson fading into silver waters. Byleth’s looking intensely at something in the distance, and a part of Linhardt wants to ask - _Do you know about my feelings for you?_

But then he thinks of how the war has made Byleth age so he looks ten years older than he should. How he worries, always worrying about others, always throwing himself headfirst into the fight if it means everyone else can live.

When’s the last time he cared about his own well-being?

So instead Linhardt forces through the burning vines in his throat, “Thank you, professor.”

Byleth nods, always humble, stoic.

Linhardt leaves to seek sanctuary in the library, not once turning back in case the disease decides to read its head.

(If he turned back, if he listened past the sound of his heartbeat roaring in his ears and his somber footsteps, he would see Byleth slumped over the pier, illuminated in the light of the moon, something light splashing into the lake with an air of solemnity.)

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


No matter how hard Byleth tries to keep this secret his own, it’s inevitable that someone else figures it out. After all, he has lectures to hold, meetings to attend, prices to barter at the market.

He thinks he’s alone in their classroom when he bends over a bucket to expel his guilty feelings. Because _he_ had been in class today, for once, to Byleth’s mixed feelings of love and regret and despair and self-hatred that he ever developed these feelings in the first place. The mere sight of him slumped in the corner, hair fluttering with his steady breaths as he slept through class was enough to send the flowers in him up to his throat until they threatened to suffocate.

(Linhardt doesn’t come to class as often as he used to. Byleth thinks it’s because there’s no one forcing him to.)

“Professor?”

Leonie looks down at him in concern. She’s only a few feet away, not far enough for Byleth to cover the bucket, or maybe chuck it out a window or shove it under a table.

She freezes at the sight, because surely she knows what the amaryllises lying in a blood-smeared mess means for him. Byleth’s sure he’s the only one who didn’t know what Hanahaki disease was before he contracted it himself.

He forces his breath to steady, but his voice is still scratchy when he asks, “Did you need something?”

“IーI had a question.” Leonie looks in the bucket, face paling at the sight. He waits for the question, but instead she asks, “How long have you been hiding this?”

He doesn’t answer, which is an answer in and of itself.

“If you’re throwing up more than one or two flowers it has to have beenーmonths.” Silence. Byleth curls his fingers around the rim of the bucket.

Leonie stumbles, trips and falls. Byleth has never thought of her to be clumsy, but she shows it now when her hands land on his knees, looking as breathless as he feels.

“Who is it?”

Byleth puts his hands on top of hers as gently as he can manage in this moment. “It’s okay, Leonie.”

“No. Noー” Leonie shakes her head. “I can’t lose you, not you, tooー” Her grip on his knees keep him steady like he’s being anchored, and he knows she’s thinking about Captain Jeralt, the person she admired for most of her life, Byleth’s father, long dead now.

“Give it up,” he says, and he’s not speaking to her now, he’s speaking to himself. _Give me up._

He still has time, the part of him that’s still in denial argues. He can learn to unlove, to see what made him fall in love and look and watch and force himself to feel nothing at all.

(Even now, he lies to himself. You can’t unlearn a feeling, only have it fade with time until, like all forgotten ghosts, they haunt your mind and occasionally reappear again in a glimpse.

Time he doesn’t have.)

Leonie shakes her head, disbelieving. “No, we can still stop this. Who is it? You can go to them, confessー”

“Leonie.” She stills, blinking away unshed tears, because Byleth sounds like he’s about to crack and break into a million pieces in front of her. It hurts, the look on her face right now. This is why he’s tried so hard to keep it a secret - he never wanted anyone to feel the despair he felt when he realized what was happening to him. “I’ll be okay.”

“How can you say that?!” Her voice isn’t loud, but it rises far above his own. “Youーyou never give up in battle, you never gave up on anythingーyou even got Hilda to fight, Linhardt to come to classー” He flinches, but she doesn’t notice. “ーbut with this you’re giving up so easily! Why?”

“Leonie,” Byleth murmurs, “do I look like the kind of person who can be loved?”

She stares back at him. There’s a mixture of emotions on her face - shock, disbelief - but the strongest that rises to the bubbling surface is anger, tempered as harshly as steel. “I can’t believe you.”

He doesn’t know what to expect, but it’s not for her to slap his hands away and turn to storm out of the room.

“Whereーwhat are you doing?” he blurts out, despite himself.

Leonie turns to point at him. “I made a promise,” she declares, and, yes, Byleth remembers what she’s talking about, still remembers the conversation that took place in the training hall when he offered his hand to Leonie after their practice duel and the death of his father was fresh over their hearts, hovering over their heads like a ghost every night. “I promised Captain Jeralt I would protect you, so I will.”

She leaves with those words echoing in Byleth’s mind. It almost gives him hope that something will change.

Almost.

But this is something Leonie can’t protect him from. She can’t protect him from his own feelings. Especially not with what should be their final battle a day away. She’ll be too busy to fulfill her promise, and Byleth apologizes to her in the silence of the classroom, for the fact that she won’t be able to keep her promise, for the fact that he may not even survive past tomorrow. His own body’s betrayed him, and with every rattled breath he takes he smells the sweet flowers growing inside him.

Absentmindedly, he wipes at the blood drying on his mouth.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The battlefield’s a slog. Not in a ‘oh, this fight is boring’ but in an ‘occasionally I’m terrified and there’s no way I’m not gonna suffer repercussions later on with the sights I see but for the most part I’m alive’ kind of way.

Linhardt’s stationed near the back. He’s always been put here, ever since he told Byleth about his first kill, the bandit that spasmed and twitched until he became mercifully still, and _the blood, blood on his hands_ ー

At that point, Byleth clapped a firm hand over his shoulder. “I got it,” he said, and Linhardt’s been stuck in the back of the army ever since then.

He never got to thank him. He should, after this.

If he lives. Just recalling that moment over five years ago makes Linhardt clap a hand over his mouth, a petal coating his tongue, trying to force itself out. He gags.

A nearby soldier crouches beside him, shield held in front of them protectively. “Hey, you okay?”

Linhardt waves her away, swaying. “Just a little...weak to sunlight.” It’s the worst lie he’s ever told, considering they’re leading him around bushes and there’s isn’t a hint of sunshine in the gray skies. Even the sun ran away from this battle today, it seems.

The soldier draws away, but she does give him a water pouch, which he takes gratefully (does water help the flowers grow? At this point, it doesn’t matter what he does).

Caspar bursts out from the side of the flank, stinking of blood and sweat but relatively unscatched. Still, Linhardt lifts his hands to check, but Caspar grabs his arm. “I’m good. Listen, there’s something you need to know.”

“Can’t you save it for later?” Linhardt says, though he’s not sure if he’s gonna have a ‘later.’ Caspar’s eyes are bright, still bursting with adrenaline.

“It’s important. You kept avoiding the rest of the group at night after we setup camp and dinner, and I know it’s because you’ve been avoiding the professor, but last night Leonie told usー” Caspar pushes Linhardt out of the way of a stray arrow. “It’s about the professor.”

“What is it?” he manages through a strangled voice. He can’t afford to be distracted, not now, when every mention of Byleth makes Linhardt’s throat burn as more flowers spring to life and he justーhe needs to breathe.

“She found out before we left for the battle butーhe has the Hanahaki disease.” Linhardt freezes. Caspar looks back at him desperately. “Linhardt, IーI think it’s you.”

He’s already shaking his head, stepping back, wrenching his arm free from Caspar’s grasp. This is the worst news he could receiveーthat Byleth is in love with someone else, someone who doesn’t return his affections.

He opens his mouth, half because the weight of flowers on his tongue is too much, half to tell off Caspar for telling him this now, when a large, familiar shadow falls over them.

“Linhardt!” Hilda calls, voice almost hysterical. From her wyvern, Linhardt can see the whites of her eyes. She’s terrified, and Linhardt feels like a newborn calf, tripping and struggling to stand. “It’s the professor. We need you.”

“What happened?” he demands, already scrambling to sit behind her before she can manage a proper landing.

“I don’t know,” she says, her grip on the reins tight. “He justーcollapsed.”

Linhardt feels his lungs give in, and can’t tell if it’s from shock or his disease trying to kill him from the inside out.

He wants to throw up, but he can’t afford to. Byleth has the Hanahaki disease. Byleth, somewhere on the battlefield right now. And it’s hard to imagine him helpless in any circumstances, but if the disease has finally decided to take himー

Linhardt wheezes, through the burning in his throat, “Take me to him,” because if Hilda could find any other healer available, she would have. This means that the others - Manuela, Mercedes, Marianne - are all busy, or too far away.

He’s the only one who can help Byleth right now.

(If you _can_ help, a voice in his mind whispers, one that fosters in the dark and feeds off his negativity. He's long grown tired of this voice.)

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Why did it have to be now, of all times? It couldn’t even wait until after the battle was over, or maybe after Nemesis was killed.

It starts with the passageway to his lungs being blocked.

Byleth inhales, and inhales, and inhalesーand there’s nothing to exhale. Or, there is too much to exhale, but it’s not air.

He collapses. The flowers press up against his lungs, but it doesn’t feel like flowers anymore, they feel like glass shards pressing outward. They’re going to puncture his lungs, he notes distantly in the back of his mind as he convulses.

“Professor!” A great shadow falls over him. The sound of wings beating. “I’ll go get help.”

Byleth tries to say something, but petals press up against his closed lips and the most he can offer is a nod through blurred eyes.

When the shadow disappears, he forces himself to sit up sideways to release a stream of flowersーamaryllis, always amaryllis. They splatter the ground, and to his horror, there’s more red than pink. His blood paints the ground he struggles to stand on.

When he tries to brush the tears from his eyes, his hands come away crimson.

This is it, then.

More flowers burst to life inside him, too many to expel. He’s losing too much blood, and if it’s not blood he’ll be robbed of oxygen.

This is as far as he goes.

He sucks in a shaky breath.

He knew he was going to die when the first flower formed, but he still can’t believe it’s today. With Lysithea screaming furiously a few feet away, the sounds of bodies being torn apart by her magic. With Ignatz behind cover, shooting arrow after arrow with intense precision as Raphael distracts the enemy.

He didn’t want them to have to see him die. Even worse, he’s a liability right now, can’t even get a proper grip on his sword.

Haven’t they already seen enough? Do they need to see him die, too?

“Professor!”

Dread washes over him. This is the last person he wants to see right now.

Linhardt stumbles off of Hilda’s wyvern, acting as weak as Byleth feelsーwas his face always that pale? Did he get hurt?

“Professor,” he says weakly, and Byleth would respond, but instead what comes up are more flowers and he slumps over, body shaking with exertion.

Linhardt falls beside him, and Byleth wants to sob because there’s nothing anyone can do in this situation. But Linhart’s shaking hands start to glow, and Byleth’s other wounds close up and disappear as if they never existed.

The flowers are making a home in Byleth’s lungs.

“Who is it?” Linhardt asks, and that’s all anyone asks Byleth when it comes to this disease. He sounds so helplessーByleth wants to reach up, reassure him, but he can’t do that, not anymore. A tear slips down Linhardt’s face. “Tell me who it is.”

“I’m sorry,” Byleth says, because _at least give me this._ Let him die without knowing how the person he loves would react to his confessionーdisgust? Disappointment? Despair?

“Just tell me who it is,” Linhardt whispers, and it’s worse than if he had been shouting, demanding it. His hand is on Byleth’s arm. It’s the most contact they’ve had in months, the most they’ve spoken to each other since the cursed disease made itself known, and Byleth both hates and loves that this might be the last time he’ll ever get a glimpse into the future he could have had with him.

(He can still remember the last time they touched all those months ago, when Linhardt’s hair had fallen over his face as he drooped, asleep, and Byleth had brought up a hand to brush his hair back, an unnamable emotion sticking in his throat.

‘Love’ is too simple a word to describe what he feels for him, the all-encompassing emotion that Byleth basks in like it’s sunlight.)

Through the blood and flowers rising in his throat, he gurgles, “I’m sorry. It’s you.” He coughs, and says, as clearly as he can manage, “I love you. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault,” because the last thing he wants is Linhardt blaming himself for something neither of them could control.

He falls silent, eyes blurring with unshed tears and blood as he gives in to the unbearable pain in his lungs, the suffocation.

“Oh,” a voice says, quiet and defeated, and it sounds like Linhardt, “Byleth, Byleth, _Byleth_.”

But Linhardt would never call his name like that, reverent. Would never see him as anything more, and Byleth thinks he’s imagining it as he dies slowly, under the pressure of too many flowers in his lunges.

Something warm and soft presses on his lips. He registers it faintly, the way one would register a far-off noise, distantly.

Then a breath enters him, not his own but someone else’s, and he realizes that the warmth are lips on his.

And Byleth _breathes_ _in_ the exhale. Responds in kind with his own kiss, as fierce as he can. It’s feverish, desperation tinged with longing and his jaw hurts and mouth aches but when he shivers, it’s not from exhaustion but from feeling. He feels a flower bloom in his chest, different from all the cursed flowers that have been haunting his dreams and in his waking. His mind is numbingly still, stuck on the feeling of lips moving against his.

They break apart, Byleth panting. Above him, Linhardt stares back, looking tired but with a tiny, pleased smile that makes Byleth burn like the beginning of an eye-catching sunrise, slow and steady.

It’s everything he ever dreamed it to be, and more.

Byleth takes a breath, and for the first time in months, doesn’t feel the suffocation of flowers crowding his lungs.

“You saved me,” he says, shocked.

The grip on Byleth’s arm tightens. “I’m a healer,” Linhardt says smugly. “It’s what I do.”

Then Byleth realizes: “You love me?”

“I love you,” Linhardt confirms.

“I...” Byleth doesn’t know what to make of this. “I love you, too.”

“So you’ve said.”

A voice from behind Linhardt says, exasperated, “This is great and I’m happy, but can you guys make out later? We have a fight to win.” The glare Lysithea sends at them is acerbic and enough to remind Byleth that he’s alive, that there’s still a battle going on. And they still have an enemy to defeat.

And he’s _alive._

And Linhardt _loves him._

Byleth didn’t think that was something that was possible for him. He didn’t think he could feel this happy.

Linhardt helps him stand as Hilda makes kissy noises and coos, watching them, no doubt trying to avoid extra work even in battle.

“Wait,” Byleth says as he retrieves his sword and Linhardt goes to sit on Hilda’s wyvern. _Can youーwill youー_ “Can I kiss you more if we live?”

Linhardt laughs, and Byleth didn’t know he could love a sound so much that hearing it makes him weak in the knees. “If we survive this, I’ll _marry you._ How about that?”

Byleth stabs his sword into the ground to help him regain his footing. “Okay,” he wheezes, because Linhardt’s declaration is too much after everything that’s happened today.

Linhardt’s smiles makes him think of lazy mornings and long nights spent in the library.

Is it weird that he can already imagine a future with him?

“Come on,” Lysithea says. “I didn’t cover you for you to do nothing.” She marches forward without waiting for a response, but Byleth can see her red ears and knows she’s hiding a wobbly smile.

He follows her onward.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Their friends chatter quietly over the _crackle-pop_ of the campfire. They would be louder in their celebrations, but Claude insisted on having a party back in the monastery, and it’s far enough into the night that mostly everyone is asleep, save for the night guards and a few others.

Linhardt’s throat and lungs have stopped burning, mercifully so. It hasn’t burned in some time, and he doubts it’ll ever happen again.

Byleth’s leaning against Linhardt, head in the crook between his neck and shoulder, watching the others, and Linhardt can tell from the quiet rise and fall of his chest that he’s at peace.

Before Leonie enters her tent, she salutes them with a fond smile, and Byleth returns it.

“I didn’t think I would have this,” Byleth admits, drawing the blanket over their shoulders tighter around them, fixing the one over their legs.

“Me neither,” Linhardt says.

Byleth’s hand pauses over Linhardt’s. “Did you have the disease, too?”

“For months.”

“I didn’t realize.” Byleth cuddles closer. Linhardt relishes in the warmth.

“Neither did I,” Linhardt says lightly. “We were both idiots.”

Byleth hums. The idea is funny to them now that they’ve lived through itーthey were dancing around each other the whole time, without either party knowing. “Which flower was it?”

“Iris.”

“Oh,” Byleth murmurs. “Wisdom and trust.” Linhard nods. The flowers from the Hanahaki disease are supposed to represent how they see the other person. “Were you seriousーabout the marriage?”

“Of course I was. But I can’t propose to you yet, I haven’t bought a right.”

“You could cut and tie a lock of your hair and propose to me with that and I’d say yes.”

“I’m sure you would.” Linhardt presses a kiss to the top of Byleth’s head just to feel him relax against him.

Byleth’s hand rubs comforting circles into Linhardt’s. It should be strange, that a man who’s held weapons for more than he’s held another can be so gentle, but it’s Byleth, and Linhardt thinks he’s capable of anything at this point.

When he sleeps that night, and for many more nights to come, it will be in Byleth’s arms, and that’s all he can ever ask for.


End file.
